1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of this disclosure relate to tile systems and methods, and more particularly, to systems and methods for applying coatings to the edge of a tile.
2. Description of Related Art
A variety of tile systems and methods are known. In general, tile is a manufactured material used for covering floors, walls, roofs, and other similar areas. In many situations, tile can provide a desirable appearance, texture, feel, or other surface characteristic that is difficult or impossible to achieve by other means. Tiles are commonly made from ceramic materials, although they can be made from a variety of other materials such as wood, stone, metal, and glass.
Tiles are available in a variety of shapes. Moreover, tiles are available with a variety of side profiles. As shown in FIG. 1, for example, tiles are available in a standard design 100 having four straight edges 105. These standard tiles 100 are common in the marketplace.
As shown in FIG. 2, tiles with a bullnose design 200 are also available. These bullnose tiles 200 have one or more bullnose edges 205. Bullnose edges 205 can be rounded, convex edges on one or more sides of the tile 200. Bullnose tiles are useful for several purposes, including creating an aesthetically pleasing transition between the tile and a wall the tile is mounted on, for example. Such a transition can be desirable when a tile pattern on a wall does not extend to the end of the wall, and thus a progression from the tile pattern to the wall is desired. Bullnose tile also provides a smooth, rounded, and desirable edge for tiles located at the top of a wall, at corners, near stairs, around countertops, at bathtub surrounds and other like areas.
To manufacture bullnose tile, the tile can either be pressed to its desired shape or cut from field tile to provide a smooth rounded edge. Pressing is generally not preferred, as this commonly leads to problems with over-application or under-application of decoration on the rounded edge. While cutting the bullnose edge is often preferred, cutting from field tile and subsequently rounding off the edge exposes the underlying tile base with no decoration. Thus, the exposed edge must be decorated to match the design on the face of the tile. If the decoration is done with glazes and ceramic inks, the tile will need to be re-fired in a kiln. This creates coloring and shading mismatch problems because the decoration on the top surface 210 of the tile 200 is fired twice. Accordingly, to attempt to avoid such problems, decoration can be done by manually spraying multiple coats of paint onto the tile edge. Unlike the glazes and ceramics, the paint does not need to be fired in a kiln. The paint often includes a monochromatic base coat plus a speckle or dot coat and an optional protective clear coat. The speckle coat is used to simulate the look or the design on the face of the tile. The sprayed paint is then air cured or heat cured in hot dryers. This process has several disadvantages.
First, the speckled paint will almost always provide a different finish than the existing design on the top surface of the tile, which makes the bullnose tile aesthetically undesirable. Second, the process of manually loading cut tiles into carts, mixing the paint, spraying multiple coats on tiles, and moving carts in and out of dryers is very labor intensive and adds significant labor cost and time to the manufacturing process. Third, the paint needs to be tinted and a large number of color recipes created and controlled if a manufacturer wishes to attempt to match a large number of tile designs. Fourth, air or heat curing takes a long time, which slows production. These are just some examples of the drawbacks present in the current state of the art. Moreover, these shortcomings are present during manufacturing of different types of tiles with non-straight edges (such as tiles with beveled edges), not just bullnose edges.
A problem arising with decorated beveled tiles, or with other tiles having a lowered surface at their perimeter or at a portion of their perimeter, is that common decoration techniques for creating the design on the tile's face, such as rotogravure printing or screen printing, may not be capable of printing on the lowered portions at the perimeter with acceptable quality. For this reason, often such lowered portions are not printed with a design or pattern at all, and instead have the basic, practically uniform color of the tile. Similar problems also arise with tiles having straight or perpendicular edges, for example, with wall tile or floor tile where a user wants to expose the side edge of the tile, e.g., at the boundaries of a tiled surface.
What is needed, therefore, is a tile and tile manufacturing process that provides a bullnose edge, or other non-straight edge, a lowered perimeter portion of a tile, or even a straight edge of a tile, that matches the rest of the tile, and does so in an efficient manner. It is to these needs that embodiments of this disclosure are primarily directed.